True Destiny (PART 1)
by Gizmo
Summary: Sequel to A Highschool Warrior


  
True Destiny: Part One  
  
By   
  
John MacAmhlaidh  
  
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all the characters therein are the property of Warner Brothers, Joss Whedon and Gekko Productions. I am only borrowing them for use in this fanfic and in no way benefit financially from this story.  
The characters from Final Destination are the property of Jeffrey Reddick and I am only borrowing them for the duration of this story.   
  
Thanks: To Beckybob, Steve Pantovich, Michael T and everyone who have reviewed my stories. Long life and happiness.   
And before you ask, I have no idea when the next part of this story is coming out but I'll try for two weeks from now. Enjoy and review (Especially review. I don't know if you liked it if you don't review it.)  
  
Some words of warning: This is a sort of a crossover with the film Final Destination, one of the best films I've seen this year.   
  
******  
  
There's one thing that separates man form animal and that is the ability to reason. Or that is what some people say. But if you asked Xander Harris the same thing, he'd just smile and say.  
"People have habits and instincts that rule their lives. That makes them animals."  
The same could be said for vampires. For all their demonic abilities their instincts, especially their hunger, made them predictable. They stayed together as groups and gangs that had territories and had leaders. While the rest hunted patches of their gang's territory the leaders would feed on the choicest pickings.  
Xander drew back the bowstring and tested the draw, seeing how long he could hold the arrow before his muscles weakened. The distance was the main factor in this attack and it was both a bonus and drawback. Perched as he was on the flat roof of the local library he had a full view of Shop Street and the next street over. The library was good for two things. If you wanted a place to hide where no one ever went, you were sorted. If you needed to cover every square inch of ground for a quarter mile this was the place to be. The building was a beauty, three stories high and one of the newest in town and part of a refurbishment initiative by Mayor Wilkins.   
The target came into view and slipped down an alley as a car approached. Xander dropped the bow and took up a pair of binoculars to check that he had the right guy.  
The man, if that was what he was, could only be described as pathetic. If a vampire could stand in front of a mirror and practise the art of looking pathetic this guy would win hands down. The tattered suit and foul, dirty overcoat with mouldy shoes seemed to part of a disguise that blended with an unshaven face. But there were a few things that didn't fit. Most bums wouldn't be anywhere near this part of town at this time of night at least if they wanted to live. And the guy had walked up to his 'post' with a strut that no bum would ever have used.  
There was the chance that the guy was an undercover cop but that was even more unlikely than him being a bum. There weren't many death-in-the-line-of-duty funerals for cops in Sunnydale, the simple reason being that the cops had always avoided messing with the vampire population.  
Always.  
There were always the few exceptions but they were exactly that, exceptions.   
Xander dropped the binoculars down and picked up the bow. He held it one handed for a minute and grabbed the arrow, a nice little home made job. It was tipped with a steel arrowhead that had little runs of silver etched into its surface. The shaft itself was hickory, supposedly the best wood next to oak for killing vampires. He notched the arrow and aimed. He had staked out, pardon the pun, this vampire for the last two nights and knew that it wouldn't move from its little hidey-hole just inside the alley mouth.  
He had seen the vampire come close to catching something once but he'd been ready for that. Every time some poor fool walked down towards the alley Xander would use a mobile phone and call of phone box nearby. The ringing would get the attention of the idiot and he'd cross the road to avoid it.   
* Stop fucking about and fire already. *  
The bowstring hummed and the arrow streaked across the gap. The flight time was only a two seconds but a lot could happen in that time. Something that looked a lot like a dumb blonde cheerleader type coming home from the Bronze, walking towards the alley and oblivious of everything. The arrow hit home as the vampire started to move. It looked down at the shaft that stuck form it's chest with an expression of shock and then made a little scream as it dissolved into dust. The scream was loud enough for the dizzy blonde to hear and she ran forward that Xander thought he recognised. Any doubt disappeared when he saw the dizzy blonde draw her stake and dive into the alley.   
Buffy kicked out at fresh air as she came around the corner. There was a flurry of red dust that could mean only one thing and she looked down. Picking up the arrow she came out of the alley and looked up and around at the surrounding buildings. Her eye fell onto his shooting hide and passed by when she saw nothing. He was long gone.  
  
******  
  
Allen stopped at the corner of the street and stepped back into the shadows of a shop entrance to watch the Slayer hunt. This was Rob's feeding ground for the night, one of a dozen that Allen's 'children' used throughout the town and it looked like it was about to become free.   
The Slayer walked on, acting like an oblivious child, like most of her generation. Only the difference was that she knew the score. There was a creature in a dark place down there, one that was used to scare babies at bedtime. It would reach out and take hold and when the fear built up to a sweet stench, he'd take again and leave nothing to the unwilling donor.  
The prey was within striking range and Allen knew which was which. He had no doubt that Rob was destined for an early death, like most vampires. Few of their kind lived to see a hundred, even fewer twice that.   
Then Allen's train of thought was interrupted as a flash of movement, barely a flicker, caught his eye and he heard the scream of a dying demon. His own demon recognised the twisted song and flinched with pain at the thought of going to hell and yet still managed to laugh at the misery that the creature would suffer at the hands of the Elder demons. He looked down the street again and saw what he needed to see. The Slayer was still walking and he knew that whatever had happened, she had nothing to do with it.  
She ran, jumping into the alley with a grace that few mortals could or would ever manage and came out with an arrow. She began looking and Allen decided that enough was enough. It was bedtime for this little vampire. He moved quickly to Shop Street and crossed just as an old car pulled out from beside one of the newer buildings on the block and sped away from the vampire.  
Allen tried to see the license plate but it was too dark and the car was moving too fast. It was too much of a coincidence, this car and the arrow. There was a hunter in town and that meant vampire longevity was going to drop. He kept walking and saw the posters in a travel agents front window.  
* It's winter in the Arctic. Six months of darkness sounds good. *  
He laughed to himself and walked on.  
  
******  
  
The three knew that time was running out and that gave them even more incentive to solve this thing. They had been running for two months dodging the last 'attack' by death and survived only by the skin of their teeth. When that sign had swung down in Paris they all had known that it was starting again but this time they knew what to look for.  
When they had come home they knew that they had only ten months to find out why this was happening. Each had taken a different approach. Carter had hassled the Feebies into giving him all the files on all the people that had been aboard their first flight to Paris, they one they should have died on. Clear had searched for the mortician, Bludworth that they had run into after Tod's death. And Alex had done a search on the Net for events that had similar occurrences.   
Carter was the first to turn something up. Most people never crossed the law and those who did only for small infractions. Yanni Burke was one of these small fry and was wanted in California on some fraud charges. The cops in Sunnydale hadn't been too quick in trying to catch the guy and Carter asked Alex to look into it. Two things jumped out immediately. The first was that this guy had been an assistant to the local Mayor. The position didn't seem to be too stable because the last four assistants died or disappeared.  
Alex did some more digging and cruised into a couple of chat-rooms. Some of them were total crap and he spent enough time in them just to make sure that they were dead ends. And then he landed in a site called 'Omen Seeker' and things came out about Sunnydale that truly scared the crap out of him. One person on the site had entered a story about 'hyena-people' and he quit after reading about the school principal's death. He stayed long enough to get the storyteller's handle and left. A few hours more got him a name of the storyteller and her obituary. The obit writer was another lead that might help.   
Willow Rosenburg.  
They had something to go on and maybe someone to talk to. It wasn't a great start but it looked good.  
The research had cost them though. The second anniversary was only a week away and that didn't leave them a lot of time.  
  
******  
  
"Xander was there."  
"Are you sure Buffy? Could it have been anyone else?"  
She took the arrow from her handbag and handed it to Giles. The Watcher studied it for a minute and nodded.  
"Yes. It bears a striking resemblance to the other two that you've found. I afraid that it confirms our suspicions."  
He picked up a book and opened it, handing it over to his Slayer when he had arrived at the relevant page. It only took one look to see that the drawing on the page and the arrowhead was almost identical. She flipped over and read the cover.  
"Medieval Metallurgy. So what? I thought we were talking about Xander."  
Giles sighed and gave her a crumpled sheet of paper that had lines printed out onto it in faded black letters. She turned it over and read it for a second then realised what she had.  
"He borrowed it? Xander Harris, 'I hate homework with a passion' boy, borrowed a book from here?"  
He nodded and stood, taking off and cleaning his glasses to occupy his nervous hands.  
"I can actually remember giving it to him. There was a class of juniors withdrawing their first books and he came in the middle of them. He said it was just to say he had actually taken some books out."  
Buffy couldn't help but laugh. Then she stopped and really looked at what Xander had done. The new Xander, that is. He had used old image of dithering, stupid fool and gotten what he needed. And once he had what he needed then the charade ended.  
She and Xander hadn't really spoken in the last month, just a 'hi' here and there. Mostly they avoided each other.  
* Not true. I avoided him. *  
The death of Angel had lifted a hell of a burden off of her shoulders and for the first week she had done nothing but cry. Willow had been there for every second of it and helped her as best she could. And on the eighth day she had gone to Xander and tried to ask him why he had done it.  
When Willow managed to pull them apart they had gone their separate ways. Xander had hung around because he had nothing else, which is what he had said. Now he was pulling a B average and it looked like he was going to college. He had tried out for the wrestling team and Sunnydale was now looking good enough to be Champions in the County Wrestling Finals.  
And in the month that had past he had only talked to Willow. The red head was acting as a go between Xander and the rest of the Scooby Gang and her loyalties were being sorely tested. Buffy could see it in her eyes every time they spoke. She would see the two childhood friends in the corridor outside the library, heads together and whispering. When Xander saw Buffy he would nod in her direction and walk away from. And in the last month the vampire population had been cut down severely. Any time that a vampire appeared in her sights, an arrow arrived to kill it, or a firebomb or a syringe filled with holy water. She never saw who did the deed but it had to have been Xander.  
"Buffy. You had better go to class. We can talk about this later."  
  
******  
  
"It's not as if I'm following her around, Will."  
Willow knew what he meant. All the Scooby Gang knew where the vampires hung out. They all knew to look at the obituaries in the newspaper and figure out that at least some of them had been drained. Add one and one together and you knew where to look to kill vampires. And in Xander's case he knew how to hunt.   
Willow had cast her little spell to banish the ghost that had inhabited him but it had been too late. The ghost had been long gone, its task completed. In its wake it had left a man who had the knowledge, practical and otherwise, of Special Forces warfare, of killing and most important of all, of surviving.   
"You have to talk to her Xander. If you talk about what happened maybe..."  
Xander snorted.  
"Maybe you can put flowers on my grave. We both know that every time that Buffy and I go near each other it comes to blows."  
Willow stared at Xander, pleading for some sign of him letting up.  
"Fine. Someplace nice and public where she can't pull some weapon out and gut me. But not tonight."  
The red head nodded and smiled. She knew the perfect place for this meeting.  
  
******  
  
"You can't be serious!"  
Buffy sat on her bed and flexed her arms under the battered leather jacket. The stakes slid out and into her hand in one easy move.   
"He really does want to talk but only in a public place, Buffy. He wants to be able to walk away with all his limbs attached if..."  
"You mean if we don't agree."  
Willow nodded and watched as her friend the Slayer pulled off the jacket and revealed two leather tubes tied in place on the inside of the jacket's sleeve. It had been one of Xander's ideas before he and Buffy had fallen out. The tubes worked on a simple principle. Each of them was normally twisted to keep the stake from slipping out. If you needed the stake you pulled on a little strip of leather that ran the length of the tube. This straightened it out and the stake would fall free into your hand.  
She had taken to it like a fish to water mostly because it was safer than her old method of two strings holding it in place on her arm. She stopped what she was doing and looked at her friend.  
"Why didn't he want to do this tonight?"  
"He said he had something to do."  
Buffy knew exactly what that meant and sprinted out the door.  
  
******  
  
The vampires of Sunnydale all looked on the Slayer as being the worst thing to happen to their deaths. The few surviving 'old' vampires, the ones that had been in Sunnydale longer than the Slayer spoke of easy pickings and easier living. It only made the young ones go out and die at her hands.   
Xander stood overlooking an old abandoned mansion that had seen better days. If you had been passing it you'd bet no one had stepped inside its doors in years and you'd have sort of been right. But if you looked closely you'd see that most of the windows on the bottom floor were boarded up or heavy drapes hung, blowing in with every breeze. You might spot the tracks that showed the front and side doors were being used. Getting down to the basics, saying what had to be said, the place crawled with two legged leeches.  
Bending down, Xander looked at his map again. A pair of overlays showing sewer lines, new and old, was taped over the common street index and what they told him was not good. In two hours the vampires would flow out of that place and go hunting. In the last three days this gang had killed two people that he knew of, probably more.   
* Time to have a bug hunt. *   
Hoisting a duffel bag high onto his shoulder onto his shoulder he ran down the hill and across the road. The leeches would either hear or see him coming but that didn't matter. They wouldn't come out as long as the sun was up. He threw the duffel to the ground and pulled out a pair of plastic bags. Each held chicken blood and lots of it. What it also held was a lot of holy water.  
He moved as quickly as he could and threw the first bag in a window, splitting the bag open on the drapes and showering them with the foul smelling liquid. Gagging he stepped back and checked the second bag. This one was packed to withstand an impact like the first but he had to make sure that the demons were interested.  
Watching the house carefully he saw the drapes move against the wind and knew that he had hit paydirt. Throwing the second bag a lot more carefully he let it fall inside the window. The drapes went flat against the sill and the bag disappeared from sight. A minute later the screams started. Xander took that to be his signal. The duffel bag gave up the last of its contents, his bow, two quivers of arrows and a grapnel.  
Whirling the grapnel above his head he threw it at the drapes and ripped them out as it tangled in the heavy material. He immediately saw the dying vampires and helped them along. The leeches were squirming around, covered in the poisoned chicken blood burning inside. A quick pull on the bowstring and one died as another burnt under the glare of the sun. Two more managed to roll out of the light but Xander could still see them. As he notched another arrow he remembered the Army saying.  
If you can see them, you can hit them. If you can hit them, you can kill them.  
The two died.   
The other vampires were harder to kill. They ran from the sun, hoping that he took his time in hunting them. But he knew what to do. The sun began to stream into every room as more and more windows were smashed open. More vampires died. Xander kept going until his watch bleeped, telling him that the sun was only twenty minutes from setting. He knew that there were some leeches still inside but in twenty minutes he would be here on their terms, never a good situation.  
  
******  
  
Buffy ran as hard as she could for the newest of Sunnydale's four graveyards. The three obituaries from the day before said that all three deceased had been buried here. If Xander were going to try anything, it would be here. She had an idea that he used the high ground to some advantage but that was useless here. The only buildings around were some old houses far from the graveyard's walls and some tombs. But if he was getting cocky he'd go hand to hand and he'd die in the process.  
The sun was just under the horizon when she hit the outer wall and she didn't even slow down. A quick jump carried her up and over the spiked wall and into silence. She stood still for a moment, using her Slayer senses to try and spot any movement, anything at all that could tell her where Xander was. All she heard was a scrabbling sound coming from somewhere off to the left.  
Moving quickly, Buffy found the first of three fresh graves. She couldn't hear anything from here yet but she couldn't take that chance. She sprinkled holy water all over the sod and ran to the second site. Here she got lucky. The vampire punched its hand free of the ground and felt around for a second, trying to find a good spot to lever itself up from. Buffy ran forward and took up position behind the gravestone. The vampire slowly came to the surface and as soon as its back was visible, she sprang forward and struck down with her stake.  
The vampire dissolved into dust and Buffy waited for a second as its scream faded. There was more noise coming from over where the last grave should be. She hoped that by the time this one got out the third would still be trying to dig free of blessed ground. The thing that really puzzled her was the fact that she hadn't seen Xander.  
  
******  
  
Xander was halfway home when he first felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift. It wasn't much but he knew now that trusting his instincts would keep him alive. He was on a well-lit street and over a hundred yards from home. His bow was in the duffel and well out of reach if he was attacked suddenly. He just had to spot where the attack was coming from bef...  
The vampire came in from behind and smashed him over. Rolling along the ground, Xander felt his arm twinge as the bones threatened to snap under the stress. As the vampire bent down to pick him up he kicked out and knocked the demon to the ground. Rolling away from its clasping hands he pulled free an arrow from the duffel and stabbed forward as it came for him in another rush. The silver etched tip punched into its gut and it folded over as the poisonous metal did its work. Xander pulled free a second arrow and stabbed down again, this time performing a killing blow. He watched the vampire as it burst into ashes and noticed that the soil from the grave still clung to its back.   
* I wonder where the hell he came from. *  
The nearest graveyard, the newer one was a half-mile away. Whatever had scared it had scared it well enough to make it run a good distance before trying to feed.   
* Probably Buffy. *  
The vampire finished dying and Xander looked around, trying to see if anyone had seen what had happened. The last thing he needed was some nosy neighbour spinning stories about him to his parents. He got up and tugged at the duffel. His arm flared into a mass of pain and he knew he'd done something to it.  
* I'll have to blow off the meeting tonight and get some ice on this. *  
  
******  
  
The Ford Dodge pulled into Sunnydale just after ten o'clock. The three were operating on nerves, watching everything and anything. The first thing that they saw was something they didn't see: People. On any night as good as this there would be people walking around, doing things, anything. Carter was the first to say it.  
"This is tripping, freak. I say we get the hell out of here and go to Utah like we were going to. We can sit in the centre of the salt flats for a month or two and beat this thing off for another year."  
Alex nodded along with Carter and then answered.  
"They tested nuclear weapons near there. Do I have to say more?"  
He could see their eyes glaze over as they both saw the same picture. Some Air Force puke would be flying a live nuke from A to B and oops, then a mushroom cloud. All that would be left would be a big hole in the ground where they had been camping.  
"Right. Then what the fuck do we do?"  
Clear kicked in with her opinion, a good one in anyone's book.  
"We find someplace to sleep. An with the homicide rate in this town as high as it is we find a hotel or motel."  
Carter nodded and started the car up. Sunnydale, what they knew of it, was a warren of old and new roads. They had to stop and find someone for directions.  
Two candidates for directions came up a minute later. A couple of kids, very pale and emaciated were walking hand in hand down the path. Carter slowed and pulled in ahead of them, rolling down his window.  
"Hi, can you tell me where..."  
He didn't finish the sentence. The couple's faces twisted into something else and they looked at him like he was dinner. The female licked her lips.  
"Look honey, meals on wheels."  
"Step away from the car."  
The female vampire looked up and saw a small blonde standing there. It wasn't hard to guess who it was.  
"Slayer."  
The two vampires made a move towards the car and stakes fell into Buffy's hands. The vampires froze and then backed up. As with all vampires it had to have the last word.  
"This time, Slayer."  
She waited for a full minute until her Slayer sense couldn't pick them up. It wasn't a brilliant sense but it worked most of the time. The kids in the car were a problem though. She didn't recognise them but that didn't matter. If any of them had cousins in the town or whatever they would describe her and another story would be going around about her.  
"Can I help you?"  
Carter managed to open his mouth.  
"What the fuck were they?"  
Buffy smiled nastily.  
"Can I help you, potty-mouth?"  
Clear leaned across the back seat.  
"The nearest hotel or motel?"  
Buffy pointed down the street and the three saw the Holiday Inn sign. Carter managed a quick 'thanks' and hit the accelerator. The Slayer was left spitting out dust as the car peeled off down the street. With those kids safe she could take care of those two vampires now. They were too dangerous to be left walking around. She took a quick look at her watch and sighed. It was too late to go to the meeting that Willow had arranged.  
* Bummer. *  
  
******  
  
"What the fuck were they?"  
Carter screamed from the inside of the car as it tore off down towards the hotel. Alex didn't know what was going to happen. Either they'd hit the sound barrier or miss the turn altogether.  
"Slow the fuck down!"  
Carter hit the breaks and skidded for fifty yards before spinning the wheel and turning into the car park. They all scrambled out of the car and ran for the front desk. And this is where things started to get weird for the trio.  
The normal Holiday Inn reception was behind a heavy set of glass doors, protected by two sets of security cameras. The really strange thing was the design in the door. If you looked closely every single window and door on the ground floor and the next one up had a massive Maltese cross, etched into its surface. Alex knocked on the door to get the receptionists attention and saw her pop up from behind the desk. She looked at the three for a second and looked down at something behind the desk. He looked up and saw a camera pan over the doorway and then heard a buzz as the door lock disengaged. He pushed it open, planting his hand firmly in the centre of the cross.  
The receptionist saw the move and sighed in relief. Carter and Clear saw the sigh and looked each other but didn't voice the question. But they both thought it.  
* What the fuck is going on here? *  
"Welcome to the Sunnydale Holiday Inn. How can I help you?"  
The receptionist's tone was cheerful, a lot more cheerful than they felt. With the minimum of bullshit they got two adjoining rooms on the first floor. On a whim, Alex decided to take it for the week and handed over his credit card. Carter found a problem with that immediately.  
"Why the fuck did you piss your money away like that man? We might need that if we have to run!"  
Clear leapt to her boyfriend's defence.  
"We finish this here. It's as good a place as any to die."  
That put the rest on any conversation in the shitter.  
  
******  
  
The vampire looked around in shock at the mess. Half of his pack was dead at the hands of this new hunter, he was certain of it. The scent trail outside matched the one that he had found at the sniper's hide the night before and that fact did not bode well. This attack was that of a seasoned hunter, one who knew how to go after a pack.   
First, pick off some vampires, concentrating on the strongest. When the weaker ones gather together for protection, remove the protection.  
The bag of blood had been a good touch. The weak had jumped on it like animals and gulped down a mouthful only to find that it burnt worse than the foulest acid. And while they curled up in agony the hunter struck and killed. He used the sun and fear to kill, forcing them into areas of the house where he could use the bow and arrow with ease.   
Allen stood and knocked about one of the piles of dust with the toe of his boot. Hunting a hunter is never easy and finding the hunter is harder still. But they had that one covered. Of the six of his children who had survived all but two were former high school students and they had recognised the prey.   
"Tonight we feed. Then we hunt Xander Harris into his grave."  
  
******  
  
Xander walked out of the school's gym with his arm in a sling and a disgusted expression on his face. The coach had spent the last ten minutes ragging his ass about hurting his arm with the county finals only a fortnight away. And if he saw Xander with his arm out of the sling he'd track him down and kill him. That fantasy had entered his mind for a second and he had grinned. The coach would walk into the ring with him and Xander would let loose the entire Green Beret hand-to-hand encyclopaedia of whupass on the moany bastard. And in two years when the coach got out of traction...  
His daydreaming ended when he felt a hand grip his free arm in a death grip and haul him along towards the library. He didn't have to look to see who it was. Buffy pulled him into the library where Giles, Willow and Oz were waiting. The librarian waited until he had cleared the doors and went outside to slap a sign across the entryway. Once he was back in Buffy started.  
"What the hell are you at? You could have got killed last night!"  
"At what?"  
She pointed at his arm and kept on with her ranting.  
"That. You got hurt fighting a vampire last night, one of the vampires that rose yesterday. "  
Xander grimaced as he moved back form her pointed finger. The arm wasn't that badly hurt but if she poked it then that would change. He had to tell her something, maybe the truth, to get her off of his back.  
"Okay, a vampire attacked ME last night not the other way round. I was going home and it jumped me. Lucky I had my bow with me..."  
He trailed off as he realised he'd screwed up mentioning the bow. Giles reached behind the library desk and pulled out one of his arrows and showed it to the young man. Giles' tone of voice was worse than Buffy's.  
"Doing some hunting lately?"  
Xander smiled but didn't let the humour reach his eyes.  
"Bite me! I'm sick of this shit. I have done nothing wrong, nothing at all."  
He calmed down for a second and continued.  
"Since you came to this town I have been the only one of our little gang that never contributed anything to the Slaying end of business. I decided to change that with a spell and I find that I can live with the consequences of that. If you can't then come out and say so. Have some decent reasons or leave me alone to do what I can. And if you don't live that or have a problem with it, go fuck yourself!"  
He stormed out of the door before Buffy or Giles could react. They stood there, dumbfounded as they watched him walk away.   
  
******  
  
The two guys were first to wake. The stream of sunlight cut across the room and moved, lighting one block of the floor as it swung in time with the sun. It was ten o'clock when the beam managed to crawl it's way to their eyes, waking them with its blinding intrusion. Carter shot up in the bed and looked at his watch.  
"Fucking hell! Alex, wake up!"  
He threw his pillow across the room at full force and knocked his friend out of the bed as his head came level to his own. Alex fell out of the bed, more from shock than the force of the blow. Clear banged on the wall, telling them to shut up until she too realised the she had slept in. An hour later they were cruising along the road, a map from the hotel spread across the dashboard. There were three points marked on the map. The first was where Assistant Mayor Burke had once lived. The second was the local library and the third the local school.   
Burke's place turned out to be a burnt out wreck. The two-storey house was nothing but a pile of charred and blackened beams of wood and piles of brick. Alex nearly shouted with joy at seeing it. Carter wasn't happy.  
"Why the hell are you so happy? One of the best leads we had is gone and you're happy?"  
"Sure. I bet if we check the local paper we'll find that this happened after Burke started running. We might have some chance after all."  
The library proved him right but gave little else in the way of help. Their only chance was the school. It was a long shot but this guy had had two kids, both of whom might still be there.  
  
******  
  
Buffy looked across the room at Xander's head and realised that he was partially right. She would never have been able to face Angel unless he had done or was about to something vicious. Everything that Giles had turned up about her ex's earlier life had shown he had been twisted and psychotic in his rime. She had known Angel and heard the conviction in his words. He would have killed the world for a laugh.  
She needed to make peace with him and it had to be soon.   
The bell rang with a clatter and shocked her back into the world of Math. The teacher bellowed out some last second instructions and sagged back into her chair as the horde of ungrateful little piss-ants nearly ran her down in their bid for freedom.   
Xander was walking off in the direction of the next class, one he could nearly sleep through now. His French teacher was amazed at how well he had progressed from a complete inept to an almost fluent adept in the language. She'd be really surprised if she knew how he had got to that stage. Buffy trotted the last few feet and grabbed his arm before he took the last few steps into the classroom.  
"Xander, we have to talk, please."  
The look that he fixed her with was hostile to say the least.  
"All that we have ever had to say has been said. We are done. Keep your distance, Slayer."  
He shook free of her grip and walked into the room leaving her teary eyed in his wake.  
  
******  
  
"This is impossible!"  
Mayor Richard T. Wilkins the Third paced the length of the room and came back to the desk. He spun on his heel and covered the distance again.  
"This is impossible! Why won't they die? I can't spend another week locked away while Death comes to take them. Not now!"  
The pale assistant stepped out from the wall and into range of his Mayor's hands.  
"Sir. If the spell is as powerful as you have said they should die. If we found where they were we could use more conventional means."  
The Mayor stopped his frantic pacing and smiled at his deputy. He wagged his finger.  
"I normally hire assistants that are less than eager to use violence because it stops them from getting creative. But as they get used to it they see it as a cure for all ills. You, thankfully, are different. You know the useful limits of pain and death. Go ahead and try and find them. If you do, good. If not, I'll have to grin and bear a week or so in that damned circle."  
He waved his hand in a complex pattern and the floor lit for a second, exposing a pattern of three concentric circles with drawing between each circumference. The centre circle had a pentagram a single inscription at it's own centre, that of the moebius loop of infinity. A bunch of lit stars stood in each loop and three outlined stars stood stark among their lit brothers and sisters.  
"Those kids. Always the young ones that cause the most trouble."  
  
******   
  
Xander could guess that he'd stepped over the line. If anyone else had said what he had said to Buffy, their asses would be laying horizontal on a morgue's gurney right about now. The only problem was that this whole thing wasn't his fault, it was Angel's. If he hadn't gone evil this whole thing would never had happened.   
* The only thing that would make her happy is if that goddamn vampire came back... *  
A glimmer of an idea sprung into his mind and it grew quickly. But he'd need a few things, the least of which would be Willow's help and a visit to the library.  
  
******  
  
"For a place that should be Beirut, USA, this place doesn't look that bad."   
The Dodge was parked in front of the school, a cheery bright place that seemed to say 'This is the centre of the universe'. Carter found a problem with it straight away.  
"We spent a decade in one of those places and you want to go back in?"  
His friend bowed his head and rubbed his eyes with his hands.  
"We need to find something, anything that might help us. We are swinging in the wind here and the Grim Fucking Reaper is sharpening the scythe for another swing. And this time he might not miss."  
That shut Carter up. But not Clear.  
"So what do we do?"  
"When I was on the Net I noticed that two names came popping up on enquiries on weird stuff. One was a Jenny Calendar but she's dead. The other was a Willow Rosenburg. As far as I know she lives in this town but I couldn't get anything else on her. We ask the right questions, we might get good answers."  
"So what sort of questions do we ask?"  
"I don't have a clue."  
  
******  
  
Giles went through the catalogue for the fifth time. He had a couple of new shelving units because of that coitus interruptus episode in the back. He had four hundred books looking for a new home and it wasn't going to be on the top of the table. The worst part of it was that these were his own volumes he used for Watcher Research. The last thing he needed was that little ogre Snyder walking in and seeing them.   
The door swung open, thumping the wall behind it and revealed the ogre himself in all his acidic glory. Giles sighed, put the catalogue down and turned to face whatever stupidity he was going to be attacked with now.  
"What can I do for you Mister Snyder?"  
Snyder stopped short and looked up at Giles. It wasn't hard to see that they didn't get along but you wouldn't be able to guess the reasons. Giles thought he was an odious little twat that should be in a mental institution before being placed in charge of a school. Snyder's reasons were all too different. Giles was a menace, him and those weird kids. They stood between him and the Mayor's good books and he owed a lot to the Mayor. More than anyone could ever guess.  
"I have three kids from UCLA who say they were sent here to review some books with you?"  
Giles stood up and looked as Alex, Clear and Carter walked in. They looked like the last group of people that he would let anywhere near his books.  
"I take it that these are the books!"  
The Watcher looked on in horror as the Principle made his way over to the table. If he picked up one of those books and read the cover the little man would kick up a stink. That was the last thing he needed.  
"Yes. Of course. I forgot all about it. We had better get on with it then but we'll need privacy."  
Giles edged around Snyder and placed himself firmly between the table and the ogre. Snyder looked like he was going to move around him and Giles moved slightly blocking his path.  
"Fine. I'll leave you alone but I want them gone by the end of the day. And clear those books out of there."  
He stalked out the door, knowing that something was going on. He wanted to find out but it would be too much of a bother.  
* I wish the Mayor would let me bug this place. *  
  
******  
  
Giles let out a small sigh when the door swung shut behind Snyder and let himself relax a little. But only a little. Instead of one problem he now had three. The dark haired older boy looked like the typical school jock, all muscle and little else. The girl seemed to have some glimmer of intelligence in her eyes and didn't sport the cheerleader look. The younger of the two boys reminded him of Xander for some reason, but he seemed to have something that the Sunnydale boy didn't.  
* Intelligence maybe. *  
"Can I help you?"  
The youngest looking of the three stepped forward.  
"We're here to help you catalogue..."  
"No you're not. If you were you'd have presented the Principle with decent references and such. But you didn't. Now I recommend that you leave by the rear exit. Go back out the door and take a left. It's the third door on the right."  
Clear was quick off the ball and ran to the table, grabbing a couple of books. She looked at a couple of books and read the spines. The titles made her eyebrows rise.  
"I can guess that you didn't want that thing to know what you had here, did you."  
Giles expression answered her question for her. He stepped forward and took the books from her, putting them back on the pile. He pointed at the chairs and the three sat.  
"What do you want?"  
"We're looking for some kids that go to this school. The surname Burke mean anything to you?"  
Giles vaguely remembered one of the teachers complaining about a pair of children, twins that were always making trouble for her. And then he remembered what had happened to their father.  
"The father disappeared and their mother moved to Canada. Ontario, I think, but I'm not too sure."  
Carter's head dropped. Another lead was gone and his head drooped. They had three days including this one and they were wasting time.  
"What about a Willow Rosenburg?"  
Giles head jerked up and Alex knew that he had something.  
"We need to talk to her about something she posted on the Net. Just talk."  
The Watcher thought about it for a moment, barely a second, and knew that he wasn't going to say a thing to these kids. If it had been Buffy they had been asking for maybe he would have said something but she was more than capable of taking care of herself. Willow was another thing altogether. She had none of the feel for violence that Buffy had, that capacity to hurt something that a person needed to survive in Sunnydale, especially if they were part of the 'Scooby Gang' as Xander called their little troupe.   
"Hey old guy. My friend asked you a question."  
Giles came out of the haze of thought he had dropped into and saw that the jock had decided to get involved in the conversation. The older boy's mood rubbed him up the wrong way and Carter could see the Ripper surface in the Englishman's eyes. He took an unsteady step back under that glare and looked to the other two for back up.   
  
******  
  
Alex knew that they had screwed up the second that Carter tried the 'asshole approach' technique of questioning. It wasn't too hard to guess that if things got violent it was all too likely that they would be the ones on the ground at the end of the day and not this librarian. He tried to go for honesty and see if that appealed to his sense of honour and decency.  
"Do you remember that plane crash two years ago? The one that was going to France and had a class of students aboard?"  
Giles frowned as he tried to remember. The last few years had been hectic and current events were never going to be his forte. When you have a choice between finding out what type of demon was going to eat your face off or watch the nine o'clock news, he would choose the obvious one.  
"Well we were meant to be on that plane. A bunch of us, seven in all, got off at the last moment and watched the plane go up in flames. Within a week, we were the only three remaining of the seven, the other four having died from very weird natural causes. We came within a hairs breadth of dying also but we survived.  
And then one year later, to the day of the plane explosion, the 'accidents' start to happen again. I can see it coming before it happens and only because of that, we barely managed to get through a week of near misses in Paris.   
In two days the second anniversary comes around."  
Giles was intrigued by the story. It sounded like an involuntary death geas, a compulsion to die, but certain factors didn't add up.   
"Why did you come to Sunnydale?"  
"We managed to persuade the FBI to give us the files on all the people who died in the crash. There wasn't a lot on most of them but one jumped out. An assistant to the Mayor was on the plane under an alias. He had a warrant out for his arrest, issued from the Sunnydale PD on some fraud charge. When we looked up Sunnydale on the Web we found out that you have a death rate that's a little too high. It's not much but it rang bells in my head."  
* They are determined, I'll give them that. *  
These three reminded Giles a lot of the Scooby Gang. They had the same tenacious grip on life that his young friends had. But to come into Sunnydale like this, with a death geas on their heads...  
It wasn't smart.  
"How long until the next anniversary?"  
"Two days and the rest of this one."  
Giles thought in silence for a second.  
"Come back this evening at six o'clock. Now get out of my library before Snyder comes back."  
Carter managed to work up his courage again and came back at Giles.  
"Is that the best that you can..."  
The Watcher was in his face in a flash.  
"I need time to find something for you. If I couldn't I'd tell you now but until then you'll have to wait. If you need to do something to pass the time, I'd recommend finding some place very safe in case you have to stay here during your 'bad time'. Now GO!"  
  
******   
  
Having your Uncle Jed in jail in never something you're usually proud of or want to advertise. In most cases it's looked on as a reflection on your family and your upbringing which, in Xander's case, wasn't much to begin with. It was widely known that he had a screwball family that never really got along, one way or another, and Xander capitalised on that. He was the only family member that visited Jed in the County lock-up and that had touched the old man.   
Jed didn't mind the company and Xander benefited from being kind to his imprisoned cousin. The first good thing was access to Uncle Jed's car while he was doing two to three for Drinking Under the Influence of alcohol. When Jed got hooked up in some lame escape attempt a guard got hurt and the two to three jumped to ten. Then Jed gave him the keys to his workshop.  
Pulling up to the scrap yard Xander remembered the first time that he had walked into this place. I had taken a severe act of faith even to touch the gates because of all the rust on them. The workshop that Jed owned a part of was different. Like most people when you see a machinist's shop for the first time you only see the dirt and the oil. You smell the ozone and the grime but you don't see the precision machinery in the lathe and the drill press. All you see is some metal boxes bolted to the floor, with wheels and whirly bits sticking out every which way.  
Xander saw possibilities.  
Jed's partner, Don Thurgood in the business had been happy for the company and given him instruction in how to use the industrial gear and the welding torch. Within a week the first arrowheads had started to come out of the works. His work was good enough that Don had him doing a bit of work with cars. It lined his pocket with extra cash and gave him an excuse to come here whenever he wanted.   
Like now.  
He'd been messing around with some car springs and come up with something that he was considering to give Buffy as an offering of peace. It was three tubes welded together with a small trigger assembly and a stock, about two-feet in length and about nine inches in circumference. Each tube had a small car spring and a second tube inside. Judging it to be finished he pulled a steel rod from the stock and stuck it into one of the tubes. It got a foot down and hit resistance. He forced the rod down and the spring coiled and locked as it passed the trigger mechanism. Once he heard the trigger click into place he pulled the rod free and did the same with the other two tubes.  
Three fresh dowels slid down each tube and Xander aimed at the far wall of the workshop, thirty feet away. He pulled the trigger hard and the loaded dowel shot out and clattered into the wall. He grabbed the tubes and turned them on their central spindle and aimed again. The second tube spat out it's stick and seconds later the third did it's work.  
* Its nice to see a job well done. *  
He put the weapon down carefully and got back to what he needed to do. And it wasn't going to be easy. He had the book from the library and the one line that he needed from it. Now he needed to get Willow but only after a quick trip home and then out to the industrial estate.  
What he had to do now was going to be a hell of a lot easier than persuading Willow to perform a spell that could take a lot out of her. He had to give blood.  
The one thing about Sunnydale was that its hospital always needed blood. For the most part they got what they needed through an on-site donor clinic but they always needed more from other clinics. There were two that suited Xander's 'needs'. The first was not too far from the scrap yard, in a rough enough part of town. The second was further north and he didn't really know that area of town.   
But that didn't matter. At least not for a robbery.  
  
******  
  
The blood letting went as he thought it would. He left the clinic feeling queasy and a couple of minutes sitting in the car, waiting for his stomach to settle down. When he was ready he opened the glove compartment and took out a chocolate bar and munched on it to up his sugar level and get some energy. A pen and paper followed and he wrote down a series of numbers and letters, five in all. These were the crux of what he had to do.  
AE61B.  
He had two hours before he had to be at the hospital so he drove back to his house and picked up his mothers Dustbuster, She never used it anymore because she said the filter worked any more, which was perfect for his needs. The stuff he was hoovering up was not stuff to have floating around.  
The ride out to the industrial estate brought out a lot of old memories. The cops had gone bat-shit when he had done his little raid. He news had gone on about everything from a militia-federal war to an alien invasion. The only thing that all the stories shared was that no bodies had been found and a stash of badly damaged weapons flung to one side. After a week the whole thing wasn't news any more.  
Pulling into the front entrance he revved the car and shot through the open gateway and onto his destination. The factory was still there in all its ruined glory. The effects of the multiple explosion were still there, etched in the rusted steel like a massive finger print. The roof had fallen in under all the stress and strain, letting the wind and rain destroy the last mortal remains of dozens of vampires. The piles of red dust were spread to hell and gone.  
* Hopefully it won't be the same... *  
The factory wasn't the perfect vampire haven any more. Sunlight freely streamed in through a thousand little holes and vampires weren't the best of DIY people. The place would have been long abandoned except for one thing: vampires are like roaches, they're everywhere and anywhere you don't want them to be.  
Xander notched an arrow to his bow and walked carefully into the office area. There was old police cordon tape lying about the place and that scared him. The only reason that stuff would be on the ground would be if someone had pulled it there. Turning into the first room he looked around ad saw no evidence of a vampire. They may not be the tidiest of creatures but they did live in some level of decency. Working his way down the hall, Xander came to the spot he needed to find. The scar from his last grenade was still etched in the floor, as was the pieces of wall that he had blown in during his attack. In between was a long oval of red dust.  
"Hello, Angelus."  
  
******  
  
The Dustbuster turned out to be a piece of crap so the vampire's dust got swept up onto a sheet of paper and dumped into a plastic bag. He thought of the warm fuzzy feeling he'd get when he told Angel about his temporary home and smiled.  
* I wish I had a camera. *   
Now all he had to do was find someplace to put this bastard.  
  
******  
  
Willow tapped away on the keyboard trying to find something that would tell her how she'd slipped up. Giles had told her and Buffy about his visit and gone back to his research. She'd immediately volunteered to check out their story while he and Buffy tried to find some answer before these kids turned up.   
It wasn't easy for her to hide a lie, especially to her friends. She'd heard about the plane crash and the survivors' deaths. She followed that weird and wonderful story and kept all the files that she'd generated on the subject. The hard copy printouts of the files lay beside the computer now while she tried to find out how she had slipped up. She was normally so careful, so precise. She'd used cutouts and intermediaries and never, never left tracks behind. But these people knew who she was, her name and that scared her.  
A little bit of hacking equalled the equation. The printer started to hum and spit out the school files of each of the three and Willow read through the on screen version.  
* Browning, Alex... Nineteen. He's barely older than I am. Good student. Horton, Carter. A jock like Giles said. Rivers, Clear. Clear Rivers? Wasn't that a song. She's probably like me, parents missed the sixties and they take it out on our generation. *  
It made her feel a bit better, now that she had levelled the playing field. The school file didn't really say a lot about who these people were but it did give them an indication of how smart they were. In this case though the factor of intelligence wasn't as important as that of belief. Giles hadn't found out much about whatever this thing was that affected their lives every year, but he still might find something. She looked up at the clock above the door and grimaced. Giles had fifteen minutes to come up with something.  
  
******  
  
Xander pulled up to the school just as a three people got out of a Ford Dodge. He spent a few seconds checking them out and only saw that one of them, the blonde kid, could possibly have a weapon. Another thing that got his attention was that they weren't local. If they were they were just after moving into the area but that didn't figure. They wouldn't turn up at the school this late in the day.  
These three were here to see Giles and that was a definite fact but it didn't matter. He had to get to Willow before anything started in the library. Bad things, for the most part, always happened during the night time and that was hours away. But as much as he cared for the Scooby Gang, that part of Xander's life was over until Buffy and he were reconciled. Moving quickly, Xander got out of the car and ran to the side of the school. His only hope was that these three took their sweet time in getting to the library, giving him the time he needed to do what he had to do.  
The rear entrance to the library was locked like he thought it would be. Taking out a spare key that he had 'borrowed' from Giles, he opened the door quietly. Stealing through the bookshelves was both hard and easy, the mass of wood and paper muting the sound of his passage. The drawback was that if someone was in here with him he mightn't hear him or her until it was too late. The last thing he needed was to try and explain to Giles why he was skulking around the place.   
Getting onto his hands and knees, Xander peeked down into the main floor of the library. The table was awash with books, piled there because of Rob Fisher and Tamara Feek's little tête-à-tête. That story would feed the rumour machine for months, at least after the two got back from suspension. The door to Giles' office was closed and someone was moving around inside. Getting back to his feet, Xander moved to get a better view and saw that the Watcher was on the phone, obviously talking to someone about Watchery-type things.  
Listening carefully for a second, Xander heard the clack of a keyboard and knew that he had hit pay dirt. He needed a few seconds to get Willow's attention and this part of the night's work would be done.   
"Hsst. Hsst."  
The typing stopped and Willow's head came up over the edge of the platform, turning about to see where the noise was coming from. Xander had to let her know it was him otherwise she'd freak and that would bring out Giles, again the last thing he wanted.  
"Willow. It's me Xander. Can you come up here?"  
The red head looked into the office for a second and saw that Giles was on the phone. He hadn't heard the noise and she thought for a second of calling him but voted against it.   
* What sort of bad guy would act as Xander? *  
She came to the foot of the steps and stopped.  
"How do I know that it's you?"  
Xander shut his eyes and shut his eyes in silent agony.  
* Trust Willow to start up with the twenty questions now. *   
"Do you remember the time I stole your Barbie doll and put it in the path of the lawn mower?"  
The red head nodded and smiled as she remembered the incident. Then she frowned.  
"That was my favourite doll and you never got me a new one!"  
"Willow. With all due respect, could you be quiet and come up here. Please."  
Willow came up the last few steps and Xander pulled her into the stacks.   
"I only have a few seconds. I need you to get the stuff for this spell. The name of the spell is on the paper and the name of the person it's for. Before you ask, the spell is not for me, it's for Buffy's benefit. You'll understand when you read it. I also need you to do me a favour and not tell anyone. Not Buffy, Giles, anyone, okay."  
He waited for her nod and smiled. Then he stepped back into the stacks and ran for it. He only had a few minutes to get across town and to the slaughterhouse before it closed.  
  
******  
  
Alex nodded at the janitor as they walked into the school. Carter gave the old man a hard stare before walking on while Clear gave him an apologetic grin for Carter's bad manners. She gave her friend a hit on the arm and hissed at him to stop fooling around. He ignored her.  
"So Alex. What the hell do you think this guy will be able to tell us?"  
"I don't know, Carter, but it will probably be more than we know now, one way or another."  
The jock didn't like the answer but knew better than to keep at it. Alex was the one thing that might come between him and some gruesome death in the next few days. The turned the corner and saw a small blonde girl just ahead of them. The three looked her over as she walked towards the library, brushing her hair. Before she turned the corner she dropped the brush and moved faster than any of them had ever seen a person move. Within a second, she'd crossed the gap between them and stood in front of them, smiling dangerously.  
"So you're the guys that Giles was talking about? Have we met before?"  
Clear cleared her suddenly dry throat.  
"Who?"  
The blonde turned her full attention on Clear and looked her up and down before answering.  
"English guy, looks like he was born wearing tweed."  
Alex took over the conversation.  
"Yeah. We've met. He said he could help us."  
"No actually he said that he might be able to help you and nothing else."  
  
******  
  
Carter watched the little blonde block their way and decided that the friendly touch wasn't getting them anywhere. Their lives were measured in seconds and pussyfooting around wasn't getting them anywhere. He grabbed the girl's shoulder and gave it a bit of a squeeze. He hid the shock he felt when his grip didn't seem to have much effect.  
"I'm sorry if we're holding up you're study schedule or beauty therapy time or whatever but we need to see that guy now. So if you don't mind..."  
He started to push her aside and then there was a blur of movement in front of him. He looked down and felt a hand grip him by the throat and lift him off the ground. He freaked and started to wave his feet around trying to gain purchase and looked down again. And saw the girl holding him.  
"We have met before. You're sparkling personality and genteel manners make you unforgettable. You do know that it's not polite to push people, potty-mouth."  
  
******  
  
Giles slammed down the phone and cursed. The phone call had got him nowhere and he had little to go on. But what he had scared him. He looked at his watch and saw that the three should be there by now and walked out of his office. He took one quick look at Willow before going to the door and stopped. The young woman was holding a scrap of paper and frowning at something written on it.  
"Is there something wrong Willow?"  
She jumped, startled and hid the scrap. She gave the Watcher a guilty look and gestured to the small mound of paper beside her.  
"Sorry. I... It was just something that I got off the Web. Nothing to do with this thing that we're talking about but... I got the stuff that you wanted on the three. There were some weird stories going out about those three especially the one called Alex. Apparently he said that he could 'see death coming for each of them'. It freaked a lot of people out and he became a suspect when the students and teachers died but he was taken off the list when he nearly died saving another student. Everything else is just little stuff, their school files and newspaper articles."  
Giles nodded a thank you and walked out the door. He'd talk to her later about whatever that paper was. He knew enough about Willow and her reactions that whatever was written on there was important, maybe not to what they were doing here but still important. The door swung open at his touch and he heard voices. After a second he recognised Buffy's and the tone.  
* Someone is going to get hurt. *  
Giles had seen the pain in his Slayer's eyes when she had told him what Xander had said to her. To hear one of your best friends address you as 'The Slayer', with the capital letters included, had been truly hurtful. If he saw Xander anytime soon, he'd give him a piece of his mind.  
He looked down the hall and all thought vanished from his mind as he saw the three young people he had talked to earlier. They looked like they were having a normal conversation, no raised voices or threatening moves except for the fact that Buffy was holding the one called Carter about six inches off the floor.  
"Buffy. Um... Can we talk inside?"  
His Slayer put the young man down on the ground gracefully and watched him stagger for a second before leaning against the wall to catch his breath. The other two were looking at her with a mixed display of fear and awe. Buffy smiled at them, twirled around and walked past Giles and into the library. He shrugged and followed her.  
  
******   
  
Carter took it a lot slower now, waiting for his friends to go into the library first. He just wanted to have a couple of people between him and that girl, if she was still in there.   
She was.  
He caught a glance of her coming out of a cage to the left, holding what looked like one of those axes that the characters in Dungeons and Dragons used. It was big, sharp and evil looking. And when the blonde saw him she smiled and raised the blade.  
"Buffy. We have better things to do than intimidate stupid people, even ones like him."  
Carter's fear changed to anger in a flash at being called a stupid person. He may not be an Einstein but he wasn't stupid enough to mess with a girl with an axe. Especially one who could bench-press his weight in her sleep.   
"You sound like someone who has something bad to say, Mister Giles."  
The librarian glanced at Alex and that was enough. Whatever was going to be said was not going to be good news. Giles, ever the gracious host, waved them into seats that had been pulled away from the overloaded table. As they sat down a small red headed girl came out from behind the mound and smiled shyly.  
"Before we start, I'll introduce you to Buffy and Willow. Buffy is the one with the axe and Willow..."  
It was too much of a coincidence for Alex.  
"You're Willow Rosenburg. You wrote an obit for a teacher on the Omen Seeker page."  
The red head's face flamed as her mistake was uncovered. It was one of the few things that she'd signed on the web, one of very few things that had her real name put to it. It was almost too much. Between Xander's request, her mistake and being reminded of her favourite teacher...  
"I have to go!"  
She grabbed her books and ran out the door before anyone could react, Buffy included. The Slayer made to follow her but Giles held up his hand to stop her.  
"Buffy. We need to help these people as quickly as we can. Once I have finished explaining what is happening you can phone Willow's house. If she isn't there I'll go out with you and look for her. Okay?"  
The Slayer put aside the axe and sat down behind the three, relaxing only slightly. Giles took to pacing the floor again and only stopped when he had got his thoughts together.  
"It's actually a good thing that Buffy demonstrated her strength to you. It is one of the many facets of her life and as preternatural as any in Sunnydale."  
The eyes of the two girls and the two boys glazed over at the onslaught of big words. Only Buffy had the resistance to the barrage and said so.  
"Sunnydale bad place. Magic all round."  
Giles took the hint.  
"I can take it that you've looked at everything natural that might explain you're predicament and dismissed them. And now you might look at things that are not so natural. Well, I'll tell you of some of them. There are things in this world that would cause civilisation to collapse if they became public knowledge and a lot of them exist in Sunnydale.  
This town has had other names, the most important of them being 'Boca del Infierno' which means Mouth of Hell or Hellmouth. This town was built over the entrance to Hell and demons walk the streets at night here."  
The glaze was threatening to send the three to sleep and disgust showed in Giles' face. Buffy shook her head and all the anger that had built up in her because of Xander and everything else shot out. She stood and grabbed the battle-axe that she had put aside and stood in front of Carter. He came back into the land of the living at the sight of the weapon and pushed back in his chair to get away. She hooked the leg of the chair and pulled him back towards her. She leaned down and started to speak in a cold emotionless voice.  
"There are things out their that would kill you for the fun of it and they've done it for a thousand years. There are things out there that make Hannibal Lecter, Ted Bundy and Charles Mansun look like choirboys. And one of them has taken a dislike to you. And that means that you listen and shut up. Everything that Giles is going to say to you is the absolute truth and if you don't believe me you can walk out that door and take your chance with death.   
And you'll loose.  
Believe you me, when you are destined to die, you die."  
She slammed the axe down and stepped back behind Giles. The Watcher looked at her for a second and went back to his speech.  
"We checked into your story and a couple of things came to light. Burke, before he went on the run, sold several very rare books in the occult. He managed to sell them to people that I am acquainted with and they were kind enough to give me his description. In all possibility, it is because of those books that you are in this situation.The only problem is that we still do not have any idea as to who has caused this 'situation' for you."  
Carter jumped to his feet and glared at Giles.  
"You call this a fucking problem? In a couple of days we are dead. All the way dead! And there isn't anything that we can do except listen to Fuckhead here babble for five minutes before something happens that passes in a blink of an eye."  
He sat back into a chair with a thump and put his head in his hands. Clear sat beside him and tried to comfort him as best she could. Alex just sat there and shook his head for a minute before looking at Giles.  
"Isn't there anything else? I mean there has to be something, anything...?"  
Giles stared back and pursed his lips.   
"You said that you saw 'it' coming? Do you mean that you had some sort of premonition?"  
Alex nodded and sat back in his chair when he saw that Giles had thought of something.  
"I don't know. Well, actually I'm not a hundred percent sure. There are spells that cause a seer's special sight to be enhanced for a very short time and we might be able to use that. And there are others that would focus the attacking energy to take a physical form. But both types have never been tried successfully."  
Carter made a sort of noise between a snort and a cough while Clear face showed her disbelief.  
"There's no such thing as magic."  
Buffy smiled evilly.  
"Right. If there's no such thing as magic then watch this."  
She walked back into the cage and cam out with three stilettos. She stood in front of the girl and held out the knives.  
"While you check these, I'll tell you a little story. When I was sixteen a man came to me and said I was the one, the Slayer. One girl is born each generation to fight... the fight. And a Slayer has certain gifts that can be only described as magical. Pick a target, something difficult."  
Clear decided to oblige the psycho and looked around for something. It took her a minute and she smiled.  
"You see into that office and that desk. Hit the knob on the top drawer to the right."  
Buffy grabbed the knives and spun around. She waited long enough to make sure of her target and let fly. The three knives flew the distance and sank into the wood, shattering the knob with the first strike and destroying the panel behind.  
"Satisfied? I'm five foot five inches tall and can take Evander Hollifield without breaking a sweat. I can run the hundred meters in six seconds and jump and eight-foot high obstacle from a standing jump. And that's all because I'm the Slayer."  
"Buffy that's enough! We need to help these people even if they don't want it. Whoever is doing this is using Death in a way that can unbalance the harmony of the universe."  
The Watcher stood in front of the three.  
"You said that you've only a few days left. The second anniversary falls the day after tomorrow. So I recommend that you come here tomorrow after the school day ends and we'll start. Until then I can only recommend that you rest and get ready."  
Carter started to shake his head and got up.   
"This is bullshit. We have to get somewhere we can be safe. We..."  
Giles cut him off.  
"Where is that? It doesn't matter where you go or what you do, you're still mortal. You'll die sometime and if you don't do something soon, that sometime could be in the next few days. I can only say this; trust us. We have certain skills and can help but only if you let us."  
  
******  
  
John Stack had had a bad day and there were two reasons for that. First he'd drawn the short straw for this duty, dropping the blood at the pickup point. The stories that went around about the nurses who'd vanished during this duty never helped him. The others always started floating them around when this day every second week. They all were the same. A lone nurse goes out to make the delivery and no sooner than the doors shut on them then they're gone. People go out behind them a second later and its as if the missing people never existed.  
The second was that at the moment all he could see was the bore of a large handgun pointing straight into his left eyeball. His right eye kept swimming in an out of focus as the tears built up but he could see the mask clearly.  
None of the stories ever mentioned a robber.  
"Step back from the dolley and turn around!"  
The voice was rough but calm. John turned around and felt hands grab his and pull them behind his back. He felt a cold object touch his wrists and heard the snap of handcuffs closing shut. A second later his trousers were in a pile around his ankles and his Simpson's boxers were exposed for all to see.   
"Hey! What are you..."  
The gun touched the back of his neck and he flinched as the cold metal touched the soft skin.  
"No noise!"  
John shut up and kept still. He heard the dolley be wheeled away and some grunting noises. A second later there was a hollow thump and the sound of an engine starting up. John turned his head and saw the guy standing beside him again, the gun down by his side.  
"Sorry about this man but its in a good cause."  
The masked man ran to the car and beeped the horn several times until John could hear someone coming to the door. As the portal swung open the car raced off and John stood there as two of his friends stood there looking at him in shock.  
"GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THESE CUFFS!"  
They ran back in to get a camera.  
  
******  
  
The scrapyard tool shed had cooled down a good while before, its machinery shut down and their engine heat dissipated by the cool breeze of the evening. Xander's car lit the rusted exterior as he pulled up facing its entrance and used the high beams to find his way to the door. He gagged as the smell of one of his messages wafted over him as the metal doors swung in. A few seconds later and the car's load was hidden safely in an old battered refrigerator. He knocked on the shed's lights and backed the car away from the door. Once the battered automobile was parked he opened his glove compartment and pulled free a scrap of paper and his guest for the night.  
The K-Mart bag went onto the floor of the shed and Xander pulled out a bag with bits and pieces he'd need if this idea worked. The chains and lock he'd got in the yard, the lock a massive chunk of steel that he'd got from Don's office earlier. This was used to lock the gates while Don was on holiday and Xander could safely say that nothing short of a bomb would open it. In fact it would probably be easier to cut through the gates than the lock. Dropping them back into the bag he pulled free a cross and a foot long metal bar. These he dumped on the ground.  
Last but not least came a glass container that had once been an aquarium. Some rich guy had kept priceless fish in it until the last earthquake split it in half.  
Xander had used Perspex and plastic sealant to cover over the damaged areas and create a waterproof seal. The tank had held water for a week without leaking and that made the container perfect for his needs. It wasn't pretty but it wasn't meant to be.  
Now he would see if his second theft had been worth the effort.   
AE61B  
He went through the bags of plasma looking for the barcode that corresponded with the numbers and letters in his hand. It took ten minutes of holding his hand under his armpit and five of actually searching before he hit the jackpot. The bag was just like the others but this one held his blood and Angelus' life.  
Dragging the aquarium into the centre of the floor Xander spilt the ashes into the bottom and watched the red dust billow as it hit the glass. Xander wasn't too sure about the next bit but trial and error wouldn't hurt. He went to the animal blood and pulled the two five gallon drums to the aquarium and tipped their contents in. Then he took the bag with his blood and slit it, spilling its contents into the evil smelling mix.  
There was an instant reaction.  
The blood began to bubble and writhe about and Xander backed off, picking up the cross and bar. The blood started to fountain and spilled over the side of the aquarium and he stepped forward again. Then the really weird stuff started. The blood stilled and darkened, it's level sinking down and reducing. The level fell until a form started to appear in the black ooze.  
The form of a tall body took shape and the blood flowed into it, draining the aquarium dry as if the blood had never filled it. Xander looked on and gagged as the blood flowed over the body and muscles were formed as the demonic dust took the offering and twisted it to its needs. The muscles tightened and stretched, flipping the body onto its back and Xander saw the creature's face. The eyes were forming, growing from little beads of pus and blood into grey lifeless marbles. The jaw opened and a scream built up and shattered the silence, as the demon Angelus was reborn. Another scream sounded as the muscles finished growing and skin appeared over them.   
As the body went limp and fell to the aquarium's bottom, Xander walked to the container and held the cross before him as he bent over the body.  
Angelus reacted with blinding speed, his hands reaching for Xander's neck and squeezing. The vampire's face hit the cross as he jumped forward and the pain smashed him back into the bottom of the glass box. He jumped forward again and the bar in Xander's hand met his head this time, adding a bloody rent to the burn mark on the angelic features. The vampire fell back for the last time, as unconscious as one of his species could ever be.  
Xander fell back and gasped as the pain from his neck burned passed the adrenaline in his blood.  
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Dead-Boy."  
  
  
TO BE CONTINUED  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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